Businesses of all types and sizes throughout the United States, Mexico and beyond bring their disputes to Gardere's litigation team and receive practical, responsive, boutique-style attention in return. Our clients have access to the firepower and value of a well-known and highly-regarded Firm's capabilities and interdisciplinary strengths.

Gardere has a national and international energy practice formed around our Energy Industry Team, which is a multidisciplinary group of approximately 80 attorneys with diverse backgrounds, experience and skills specific to the energy industry. Our team includes attorneys who have served as in-house counsel for major energy companies, providing a depth of insight into our clients' needs, issues and concerns. We understand and regularly practice in virtually every sector of the energy, and we represent a wide variety of industry participants from multinational corporations to individuals.

From our offices in the United States and Mexico, our International Practice helps clients operate in today’s global economy. We have more than 30 professionals operating as a boutique within an Am Law 200 law firm and are able to provide focused service with the resources of a large firm. We understand that clients who are engaged in the global marketplace need lawyers who can operate seamlessly across multiple jurisdictions. Our international experts are multi-lingual, are culturally fluent and intimately familiar with various legal systems across the world, especially those in Latin America. Whether you need help with commercial transactions, regulatory matters, customs and import regulations, immigration matters, M&A and joint ventures, international disputes, or international tax planning, Gardere’s international team is here to assist you.

We represent domestic and foreign private funds in all aspects of fund formation, fund operations, platform and add-on acquisitions, and portfolio company operations. Our team has a reputation for being the go-to-lawyers for private equity funds, hedge funds, venture capital funds and family offices. We are known for our vast deal experience, the efficient way we staff and manage our work, and the way we maintain our relationships. We get deals done with sophisticated, strategic, and practical advice tailored to the needs of our clients.

Blogs

Cloud Used in Schools Pose Risk to Student Privacy

09.27.13

Many schools require children to use apps on the cloud, and as a result privacy groups are asking the cloud providers to promise better privacy protection. On September 23, 2013 SafeGov.org issued a Report about EU data privacy for students which among other things that among other things stated that the:

...advertising-oriented cloud services may jeopardise the privacy of data subjects in schools, even when ad-serving is nominally disabled.

The Report identified these threats to student “... online privacy occasioned by the use of such services in the school environment include the following”:

Lack of privacy policies suitable for schools:By failing to adopt privacy policies specifically crafted to the needs of schools, cloud providers may deliberately or inadvertently force schools to accept policies or terms of service that authorise user profiling and online behavioural advertising.

Blurred mechanisms for user consent: Some cloud privacy policies, even though based on contractual relationships between cloud providers and schools, stipulate that individual data subjects (students) are also bound by these policies, even when these subjects have not had the opportunity to grant or withhold their consent.

Potential for commercial data mining: When school cloud services derive from ad-supported consumer services that rely on powerful user profiling and tracking algorithms, it may be technically difficult for the cloud provider to turn off these functions even when ads are not being served.

User interfaces that don’t separate ad-free and ad-based services:By failing to create interfaces that distinguish clearly between ad-based and ad-free services, cloud providers may lure school children into moving unwittingly from ad-free services intended for school use (such as email or online collaboration) to consumer ad-driven services that engage in highly intrusive processing of personal information (such as online video, social networking or even basic search).

Contracts that don’t guarantee ad-free services: By using ambiguously worded contracts and including the option to serve ads in their services, some cloud providers leave the door open to future imposition of online advertising as a condition for allowing schools to continue receiving cloud services for free.

We think any provider of cloud computing services to schools (Google Apps and Microsoft 365 included) should sign up to follow the Codes of Conduct outlined in the report.

The cloud privacy issues identified in this Report present no surprises. Even though the Report is focused on students in the EU, clearly the privacy issues impact students world-wide. What the cloud providers to do remedy the situation will be interesting to follow.

Professional

The publications contained in this site do not constitute legal advice. Legal advice can only be given with knowledge of the client's specific facts. By putting these publications on our website we do not intend to create a lawyer-client relationship with the user. Materials may not reflect the most current legal developments, verdicts or settlements. This information should in no way be taken as an indication of future results.

Newsroom

All rights reserved. Attorney advertising. Unless otherwise specified, Gardere attorneys are not certified by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization.

Search Tips:

You may use the wildcard symbol (*) as a root expander. A search for "anti*" will find not only "anti", but also "anti-trust", "antique", etc.

Entering two terms together in a search field will behave as though an "OR" is being used. For example, entering "Antique Motorcars" as a Client Name search will find results with either word in the Client Name.

Operators

AND and OR may be used in a search. Note: they must be capitalized, e.g., "Project AND Finance."

The + and - sign operators may be used. The + sign indicates that the term immediately following is required, while the - sign indicates to omit results that contain that term. E.g., "+real -estate" says results must have "real" but not "estate".